Police search homes of Zwiebelfreunde board members and OpenLab in Augsburg

I found this part the most disturbing:<p>&gt; While searching the premises of the board members in Augsburg, Jena, Dresden, and Berlin, the police – on their own accord –decided to extend the search to premises also used by members of the CCC: the OpenLab in Augsburg. Here the officers were confronted with hackers in their natural habitat: substances to clean and etch circuit boards as well as hair bleach. After interpreting the contents of a whiteboard as a bomb making manual, the officers then went on to accuse random people present at the hackerspace of plotting a bombing attack. Three people were arrested on the spot and the hackerspace was subsequently searched without a court order and without any witnesses.<p>So working on circuit boards is being construed as plotting a bombing attack? Really?

The gist of it:<p>Someone did something probably illegal and put a @riseup mail in as the contact info. Police looked at riseup (Not-in-Germany) and found some people (In-Germany) forwarding donation money to riseup. Police and state prosecutor somehow conclude that these donations might be relevant and seizes them (and the usual bycatch).<p>--<p>Now my commentary: On the face of it this seems overblown and rather out of proportion. To me it looks like some AG was looking for an excuse to raid these left-wing organizations. It doesn&#x27;t have to be that way, but I have a hard time imagining how some leftist hateblog I&#x27;ve never heard of before justifies such a large scale raid of (presumably) at best tangentially related entities. It&#x27;s a somewhat different story of course if it turns out that the backers of the blog have actually been raided as well as part of these raids.

Fun fact: the police found a &quot;3d printed, bomb shaped object&quot; and put it into an evidence bag with the label &quot;offence: causing an explosive blast&quot;. The object can be seen in action here:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=g2HDoyKE2W8" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=g2HDoyKE2W8</a>

Its especially chilling, because in germany, we dont have the food of the poisonous tree doctrine. So even if the police searches those places illegaly, if they find something else while conducting the search, lets say small amount of drugs, they will prosecute you for that.

After my initial outrage, I calmed down and looked at this dryly. What if the main issue is that the prosecutors just do not have appropriate mental models of hackers?<p>The crucial step is that they wanted to get ahold of Riseup, a mail provider (and hence, in their view, a commercial entity). Then they find those German people (whom they <i>can</i> get ahold of) who collect money for Riseup. I find it very likely that they just <i>could not imagine</i> someone collecting money for a commercial entity without being financially and personally intertwined with said entity.<p>For example, if you see someone collecting money for Coca-Cola, wouldn&#x27;t you think that they&#x27;re paid by Coca-Cola, no matter how much they insisted they&#x27;re &quot;just fans&quot;?<p>(Note: This argument only concerns the original warrant. What the policemen did at the hackerspachackerspace was just preposterous.)

A bit of perspective for non-Germans: The raid was ordered from Bavaria, a state in Germany which is traditionally governed by the conservative CSU party, which is currently also in the (international) headlines for the ongoing immigration fight, since they are part of the federal government with Merkel (they are taking a very though standpoint on immigration).<p>Just recently this party introduced a new police law in Bavaria which is considered to be the toughest in Germany, making it considerably more easy for Police to read your mail, block your bank account, to surveil you etc.<p>While this is not directly related to the CCC raid, the raid was ordered by the Munich Attorney General. For Germans, it is not surprising that such an act comes from the Bavarian justice system.

Not an expert in German legislation, but is this even legal? Seems like those people weren&#x27;t convicted nor even suspected of crimes.<p>I hope the victims fight back and get adequate compensation.

Is there an Electronic Frontier Foundation equivalent in Germany? If not, what stops police from conducting searches like this in future? (If this can even be shown as illegal in a court.) I doubt individuals or even small organization can properly fight legal battles.

wow they had chemicals (for 3d printing) and they were building a bomb <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=g2HDoyKE2W8" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=g2HDoyKE2W8</a> &#x2F;s

Ugh. That confiscated equipment... much of it that gets returned (eventually) won&#x27;t be suitable for using on Tor&#x2F;Tails development. There&#x27;s no telling what changes will have been done to it. :(

This reminds of an era which we will soon see around the world. Today fighting for your privacy is not a choice, it is a need.

This seems a malicious ruse to intimidate hacker activism

There were additional police raids carried out in Dortmund, Germany last night. They were targeting a server hosted at Wissenschaftsladen (free.de) but ended up searching other unrelated offices, including the rooms of CCC Dortmund.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;heise.de&#x2F;-4100194" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;heise.de&#x2F;-4100194</a>

The CCC are in no position to complain. They have become too political and openly support left extremist groups. They allow talks by Antifa members and they have Antifa flags in their centers [1]. These are people who threaten and practice violence for political reasons and are watched by state police.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;DandelionInaBox&#x2F;status&#x2F;901474627834318848" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;DandelionInaBox&#x2F;status&#x2F;90147462783431884...</a>

For someone completely out of the loop, since this jumped to #1 on HN:<p>What&#x27;s Zweibelfreunde?<p>What&#x27;s OpenLab?<p>Why did the police raid them?<p>Why should I care?<p>And more importantly, why does HN care so much, apparently? :)

There are also a ton of websites from german nazis (I mean common folk nazis, not institutional nazis like the CSU) that use webhosting in the USA to circumvent the more restrictive free-speech in germany. Not like thats pursued of course.<p>Unfortunately a common sentiment in germany is that left and right extremism is equally pernicious, or even worse people tend to be more annoyed by the left burning luxury cars than they are with nazis burning refugees.